Missing the Child Abuse Story: How the Popular Media Promotes Fear and Fails to Protect Children

• In Event: 434 - Section on Children and Youth Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Vulnerable and At-Risk Youth

Abstract

The popular American media has always covered the child abuse “story” as a bifurcated tale the bad adults who hate children and the good ones who love (and save) them. The realities of child abuse are far more complex, and, for the past four decades, research shows that the link between child abuse and poverty is pervasive and entrenched. Nevertheless, the popular media continues to tell horror stories about child abusers, in ways that promote fear and panic about child safety, emphasizing the need for increasing penalties and punishment for abusers, and ignoring the profound research and data showing that increasing funding and support for social services are a less expensive and more effective way to protect children. This paper places the popular American media “story” about child abuse in an historical context, showing how the origins of our child protection policies are rooted in an ideology of personal responsibility which views child maltreatment as a form of bad individual character. Additionally, this paper highlights the way popular media coverage of the child abuse story further supports this ideology, by promoting irrational fears rather than the sober (and more mundane) facts about the true causes of most child abuse.

Author

• Emily Horowitz, St. Francis College